City, DOT meet about Main Street resurfacing

North Carolina Department of Transportation officials saw firsthand Friday the Main Street surface that has frustrated so many Lexington business owners and motorists.

BY NASH DUNNThe Dispatch

North Carolina Department of Transportation officials saw firsthand Friday the Main Street surface that has frustrated so many Lexington business owners and motorists.DOT Division 9 Engineer Pat Ivey and board member Jake Alexander toured Main Street with Lexington Mayor Newell Clark, city manager Alan Carson and Rep. Rayne Brown, R-Davidson.After the meeting, Ivey said he understands the concerns the business community and those who frequent the central downtown area have."What we've committed to do is go back, take a look and see if there are any other options we can look at as a department and get back with the mayor in a week or so to see if we have funds to take care of that," Ivey said.DOT crews recently used a preservation technique called micro-surfacing to resurface Main Street, which differs from traditional hot-mix asphalt surfacing and employs dense-graded aggregate, asphalt emulsion, water and mineral fillers to seal and extend the life of roads.Some citizens and merchants, who thought the surface was a foundation for an additional layer of asphalt, said they were "outraged" when they learned that what they saw was reality for the next three to five years.Cost savings and road preservation were the two main reasons the DOT chose micro-surfacing for Main Street, and officials said the process cost a third of the price of traditional hot-mix surfacing.After being contacted by several citizens and Clark, DOT officials said they could not resurface the entire street. However, Ivey said they would help the city pursue methods of beautifying the uptown Lexington area and open better lines of communication.On Friday, Clark and Ivey said they discussed a third option."What we're looking at are some possible paving options, short of milling and resurfacing the whole street, which we know we don't have the funds to do," Ivey said.A thin lift overlay is one possibility, Ivey said, which refers to a surfacing process where a thin layer of asphalt is bonded to an existing surface to reduce noise and correct minor defects."We are continuing ongoing conversations with them, and they are continuing to bring different options as to what they could do with their budget," Clark said. "I felt really good about their willingness to sit down and listen and right what they thought wasn't a really good job and what they could do to improve it."Nash Dunn can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 227, or at nash.dunn@the-dispatch.com.